Reference to background art herein is not to be construed as an admission that such art constitutes common general knowledge in Australia or elsewhere.
Wear panels are typically used in the minerals, mining, foundry, milling and materials handling industries in order to increase the life of equipment, decrease maintenance downtime and increase throughput. Such panels are typically secured to the floor and walls of chutes, hoppers, bins, tanks, separator devices, fan housings and other equipment where abrasive or corrosive material would cause rapid wear in order to provide an area of cover or liner in sliding contact with materials such as crushed rock, coal, ore, grain and other abrasive aggregates.
There are an existing range of wear panels, for example those disclosed in e.g. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,307,140; 5,055,336; 5,705,250; 6,129,967 and 8,039,075. However, such panels have drawbacks in that they are e.g. expensive to manufacture, require specialized tooling to fabricate and assemble, require the use of screws, anchors, adhesives or rubber substrates to bond portions of the wear panels together, are difficult to cut and assemble on site, require long-lead times and typically experience de-lamination and cracking. By way of example, ceramic wear members have been used in wear panels. However, when ceramic edges are exposed to wear, the edges easily chip. In addition, when the ceramic wear members are encapsulated in polyurethane or rubber, delamination can occur; when using e.g. a hot moulding rubber process, thermal shock can damage the ceramic or other wear members and create a less preferable product; and a hot casting off-site facility is typically required for manufacture and assembly which can increase cost and lead-times. Bonding ceramic to other wear materials can be complicated and unreliable. Further, the use of screws and anchors in order to attach wear members can create weaknesses in the members causing cracking, are more expensive to manufacture, require tooling and are difficult to assemble on site. Additionally, when wear panels are assembled off site and delivered to a customer site in whole, if dimensional or figuration changes must be made, such wear panels are difficult to cut and burdensome to manoeuver.